


Guide Us Home

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fallen Agent, Gen, Multi, Speculation, aos 3b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 08:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6846649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Jemma,” she snaps into the comms. “What are you doing?”</p><p>“A grand gesture,” Simmons replies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guide Us Home

_And all of the lights will lead_  
_Into the night with me_  
  
_All of these stars will guide us home_  
  
\- Ed Sheeran, All of the Stars

-

_“May, I need you to teach me to fly a plane.”_

May pauses, fists raised, and checks that all the adversaries in the area were down before moving on and responding.

“Come again?”

_“I need to fly a plane in – four minutes. And counting.”_

“Where are you? What’s going on?”

_“Hangar B - I don’t have time to explain, how do you start this thing?”_

“You wait.” 

May grits her teeth, and takes a pistol from the belt of the nearest unconscious agent. 

“Alright!” she calls around the corner. “I have a gun! Stay out of my way.” 

Of course, it doesn’t work, and she fires four bullets, drops the gun and takes out the next two with her hands. Only one bullet was a kill shot. Another might be, without attention, but the other two should be fine. They wouldn’t be able to chase her, and that was the important thing.

“I’m coming to you,” she promises. 

She could hear the fringes of panic coming into Simmons’ voice. A big decision was coming. May thinks back to Daisy’s warning that one of them was going to die. She’d thought at first perhaps they had averted it somehow, but when Fitz had recounted his meeting with her, he’d insisted that she had not only brought it up, but said that the dead was going to be one of their team. The wording ruled out quite a few people, but Simmons was not one of them.

May runs into Hangar B, and in an instant, the worry is seared away by a flash of white-hot fury. 

_She lied._

The hangar is empty, and they are running of time.

“Jemma,” she snaps into the comms. “What are you doing?”

 _“A grand gesture,”_ Simmons replies. 

- 

_“A grand gesture.”_

Fitz has to take a second to steady his breathing, as every painful note of fear and determination from her voice seems to bleed into the anxiety-thickened air. 

Beside him, Lincoln hangs his head and bites his lip.

“You don’t think-“

“Shh.” Fitz raises a hand, and Lincoln falls silent. On the other end of the line, Simmons has gone silent. Perhaps she’s receiving instruction from May after all. (Perhaps, Fitz can’t help but hope, May is chewing her out for attempting to make an unnecessary sacrifice – but that’s unlikely. Simmons isn’t as prone to jumping the gun as he is. She’d only be doing something drastic if there weren’t any other way).

 _“Fitz.”_ She interrupts before his thoughts can spiral too far toward despair.

“I’m here.” 

_“I need you to override the controls for the plane in Hangar E. I need you to do it without asking me any questions. And I need you to do it right now.”_

Her voice quivers. He can imagine it, the way her shoulders shake, and she tries to contain everything, press it down and back and focus. She must be trying so hard not to cry. When this is over – _when,_ he insists – he’s going to hold her all the way home, protocol (or what’s left of it) be damned. 

(He tries not to let the quiver in her voice be an alarm, warning him that they might not both be coming home this time. That is not an option. There is always a way. They are not cursed. He grits his teeth.)

He grits his teeth and obeys, shutting down all automatic and cruise settings.

 _“What are you doing?”_ Daisy asks. _“Fitz, the controls in E are whack, what’s up? Jemma, where the hell are you?”_

 _“I’m in E,”_ Simmons speaks before Fitz can even formulate an answer that doesn’t sound like doom. _“I asked Fitz to override the controls. I’m going to fly it manually. It’s the only way to make sure Hive can’t hack his way back in.”_

_“Hive can’t hack anything, that’s what I’m for. Let me reprogram it! I can do it in two minutes.”_

_“We don’t have two minutes,”_ May interrupts. _“Help or leave.”_

- 

Daisy sighs, releasing the button on her comms. Is she really hearing what she thinks she’s hearing? 

The vision flashes into her head again. Space. Floating. The window exploding. Somebody – and for the life of her, she can’t figure out who – dying. She almost wishes she could watch it again, to see the shape of that shoulder and try to figure it out. But then she’d know, and really, that doesn’t feel much better.

Her stomach turns. 

“What’s going on?” Coulson asks. “Did they find it?” 

“Yeah.” Daisy picks up the bottled protein shake Simmons had given her just that morning, and twists it anxiously in her hands. “Yeah, they found it.”

She removes the headset and switches the comm line open, so Coulson and Mack can hear the conversation too.

_“…to take it up. Crashing it in the ocean will just infect the water and fish like with the Terragin crystals. Burning it could release it into the air. The only way is up.”_

_“Into space?”_ Fitz sounded terrified. _“Jemma. It’s not built for that – the windows will cave in. You’ll suffocate.”_

_“Then we’ll just have to hope I get high enough first.”_

There’s a long silence. When Fitz finally breaks it, his voice is low and gravelly. Wounded and reluctant. 

_“I can’t let you do this.”_

With a significance largely lost on Daisy, Simmons whispers back:

_“Then I’m glad it’s not up to you.”_

Coulson hangs his head.

“Oh, Jemma.” 

He drags himself up from his desk and paces, slowly, almost aimlessly. He wrings his wrists, but it doesn’t help like it used to, so he bites his lip instead.

“Wait,” Mack objects. “Is she saying –“

_Space. The windows exploding. You’re going to suffocate._

Daisy inhales sharply. The cold air shocks her enough to leap briefly into action, attacking the keyboard furiously to try and reprogram the plane.

 _“Lock her out,”_ Simmons orders, the choking, wavering terror beginning to dominate. ( _She’s crying_ , Daisy realises.)

_“I –“_

_“Please, Fitz,”_ she begs. “ _This is our home. We have to do something.”_

-

Fitz clenches and unclenches his hand. He grinds his teeth together, shaking with fury. Why is it always them? 

“Fitz,” Lincoln reminds him, as gently as possible. “We don’t have much time.” 

Fitz steps back, and stares down the collection of massive computer terminals like he had done the monolith. He remembers screaming at it, _DO SOMETHING,_ but it feels like an echo. He wishes he could conjure that desperation now, but he can’t. Picturing her (oh he wants to see her one last time, that’s all) he can see the determination on her face. The _love._ And it feels not like the monolith all of a sudden, but like the ocean.

- 

_Please. Let me show you._

Simmons stares at the horizon, imagining the agony Fitz must be going through at this very moment. (She’d been through it herself, and only managed to drown it by hugging him for dear life and kissing him all over and making him feel as protected and loved as she could. If she was in his place now? So far from him? Not even able to see his face? She can hardly imagine.)

May’s steady silence on the other end of the line is somewhat reassuring, at least about the technical elements of her flying, as she clenches her jaw and grounds herself and pushes the joystick downward. But at the same time, what is May thinking? That this is her fault for bringing them here in the first place? Or for not insisting that Andrew prioritise killing Hive? Maybe May is proud of her – the thought brings a smile to her face.

She’s angled so far upward now that the horizon line is out of sight. She’s in the clouds – and then above them, where the sunlight bathes everything in warm oranges and pinks. Simmons closes her eyes for a moment and inhales. It’s going to be cold and dark outside in a little while, and she’d rather remember this when she goes. 

 _No wonder May loves it up here,_ she thinks.

After a few seconds, it occurs to her that no alarms have rung to warn her that somebody is trying to interfere. Fitz hasn’t locked Daisy out, and Daisy hasn’t tried to take control.

_Daisy._

What must it be like, Simmons wonders, to believe in destiny? As far as she knows, Daisy always has. It has been helpful at times, helping her find her place in the world, but it must also be a burden. Simmons could never stand to live like that. To believe that everything happens because it must, not because people make choices. Physics is one thing. Fate is quite another.

“This wasn’t inevitable,” she promises Daisy, knowing that it’s these thoughts that must be plaguing her - if not now, then soon. “This is my choice.”

 _“Die or let half the planet go?”_ Daisy snorts. _“Some choice.”_

“Some people would go the other way,” Simmons points out. 

_“Those people are assholes.”_

Simmons laughs. She can hear that Daisy is on the verge of crying, and so is she. Fitz, she can only imagine, is weeping by now. Her arms feel cold all of a sudden, for lack of his comforting embrace. She focuses on the horizon again, and tries to soak up its warmth, but the air is too thin for clouds up here and the blueness of the sky is starting to discolour as the distance shrinks between her and the edge of the fragile bubble through which she is about to burst.

“I’m okay,” she assures them. Comms are going to cut out soon. She’ll be out of range. But if she can just keep talking, she’ll hopefully be able to drown out the cold, tight terror that is slowly beginning to grip her heart. 

“This isn’t so bad,” Simmons remarks. “It’s nice up here. I thought I’d be afraid. I mean, I am a little, but…”

She trails off when she realises that the static has gone silent. She checks the altitude and realises that she must be out of range. They’re not just unresponsive, they can’t hear her anymore.

They haven’t been able to hear her for a while now.

Simmons’ hands shake. She clenches her fists around the joystick as the wave hits her. Everything she should have said in her final moments with them. Everything she could do, _would_ do, if she could go back home. She’d make more time for Daisy. They hardly ever talked anymore. She’d get back in contact with Weaver, see how the recruiting is going, maybe offer to help out. She’d learn to use a weapon. Something other than a gun, something better. She’d get a proper MD. Maybe even work as a regular doctor for a while. Move to a regular city. Maybe even start a family. Or maybe stay on at SHIELD. Get the Academy up and running again. Name something after Peggy Carter. Something that would last. And she would die at peace, surrounded by the people who love her, with all the time in the world. 

“Opportunity cost,” she sighs.

With that realisation, the plane starts shaking violently. Some parts break away and catch fire. This is the end, the final stretch. As she clings tighter to the joystick, fighting to hold her course, the wave of what she had thought was terror finally hits her, and she realises, it was not fear. Not of death, anyway. It was loneliness.

_I don’t want to die feeling like this._

She’s about to choke on the panic when everything stops.

The fires go out. The shaking calms and the shrapnel seems to be moving in slow motion. She has enough time to look out the window, up at the stars – completely free of light pollution, and completely her own. Earth’s stars. England’s stars, probably, by now. 

She smiles.


End file.
